Quotes About Meaning

A maior parte das coisas que importam na nossa vida acontece na nossa ausência.

But it was Genesis that got him, the Vulgate that was his namesake Saint Jerome's work. Genesis, especially chapter one, verse three. Dixitque Deus: fiat lux. Et facta est lux. Translated by himself into his personal Bombay "Wulgate": And God said, Cheap Italian motor car, beauty soap of the film star. And there was Lux. Please, Daddy, why did God want a small Fiat and a bar of soap, and also please, why did he get the soap only? Why couldn't he make the car?

Human beings who turn away from God lose love, and certainty

Stories should be like life, slightly frayed at the edges, full of loose ends and lives juxtaposed by accident rather than some grand design. Most of life has no meaning--so it must surely be a distortion of life to tell tales in which every single element is meaningful?

Verhalen zijn niet waar, maar doordat ze onwaar zijn kunnen ze waarheden voelbaar en kenbaar maken die de waarheid niet kan vertellen.

silence, too, has an echo, hollower and longer-lasting than the reverberations of any sound

The trouble with the English is their history happened overseas, so they don't know what it means. The secret if a dinner party in London is to outnumber the English, if they're outnumbered they behave, otherwise you're in trouble.

Bir iç çekiÅŸ yaln?zca iç çekiÅŸ deÄŸildir. Dünyay? içimize çekeriz, soluÄŸumuzla birlikte d?? dünyaya anlam da veririz. YapabildiÄŸimiz sürece. YapabildiÄŸimiz kadar?yla.

People called him paranoiac and he accepted the label. He had a whole theory of paranoia. I don't think he remembers that now. He said paranoia was to be understood as essentially optimistic, because the paranoid believed that there was a meaning to events, that the world made sense, even though that sense was concealed.

cling to the love of being alive and living a decent life. That's the love that makes you real.

yes, bitterness; cynicism. it was a wonderful thing I did. deeper truth, bringing you the devil. yes, that sounds like me

Similarities between this and that, between apparently unconnected things, make us clap our hands delightedly when we find them out. It is a sort of national longing for form – or perhaps simply an expression of our deep belief that forms lie hidden within reality; that meaning reveals itself only in flashes. Hence our vulnerability to omens..

Our names contain our fates; living as we do in a place where names have not acquired the meaninglessness of the West, and are still more than mere sounds, we are also the victims of our titles.

Meaning was the frame human beings placed around the chaos of being to give it shape

If tales are important, they must be well-shaped.

optimistically – get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning, and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might – as pessimists – give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway; things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos?

A life always contains a peak. A moment that makes it worthwhile.

Not to know the difference between a metaphor and a lie is one definition of insanity.

Spirituality must be distinguished from religion—because people of every faith, and of none, have had the same sorts of spiritual experiences.

The problem I want to talk to you about tonight is the problem of belief. What does it mean to believe? We use this word all the time, and I think behind it lurk some really extraordinary taboos and confusions. What I want to argue tonight is that how we talk about belief- how we fail to criticize or criticize the beliefs of others, has more importance to us personally, more consequence to us personally and to civilization than perhaps anything else that is in our power to influence.

In a world of true abundance you shouldn't have to work to justify your life.

What one believes happens after death dictates much of what one believes about life, and this is why faith-based religion, in presuming to fill in the blanks in our knowledge of the hereafter, does such heavy lifting for those who fall under its power. A single proposition – you will not die – once believed, determines a response to life that would be otherwise unthinkable.

Meaning, values, morality, and the good life must relate to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures—and, in our case, must lawfully depend upon events in the world and upon states of the human brain. Rational, open-ended, honest inquiry has always been the true source of insight into such processes. Faith, if it is ever right about anything, is right by accident.

the defense one most often hears for belief in God is not that there is compelling evidence for His existence, but that faith in Him is the only reliable source of meaning and moral guidance.